Regulatory Compliance Without Changing the Way Users Work 

To deliver high-quality care experiences and promote outstanding patient outcomes, healthcare providers increasingly depend on their data. This international healthcare provider is no exception, and the company relies on a wide range of data-driven systems to deliver patient services. 

Operating in a highly regulated industry, the healthcare provider must comply with stringent rules and controls from the federal government. These include the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which mandates that sensitive health information must never be disclosed without the patient’s consent or knowledge. 

A spokesperson for the leading healthcare provider explains: “As well as setting standards for the protection of sensitive information, federal legislation requires us to retain and dispose of emails and records within set periods of time. Like any major healthcare company, we are audited regularly—and demonstrating that we have the proper systems and processes for the retention and disposition of medical and financial records is crucial for compliance.” 

CHALLENGES AND GOALS

In the past, the company’s back-office teams relied heavily on manual processes to store, manage, and retrieve digital records. Over the years, the healthcare provider had built up a number of shared drives across the organization—and each team stored records in the drives according to their department’s individual policies. 

“One of the challenges with our previous approach to digital records management was that it was extremely difficult to ensure that our information security and governance policies were being applied consistently across the business,” continues the spokesperson. “Using shared folders also meant we were unable to assign fine-grained user access rights to each set of records, which increased the risk of accidental or deliberate data leakage.”

To address these requirements, the healthcare provider decided to replace its distributed file shares with a central, highly available enterprise content management (ECM) platform, powered by IBM FileNet software. The aim was to harness the IBM solution to ensure records could only be accessed by authorized personnel, and to create a clear audit trail showing that all records were retained and disposed of according to the relevant legal requirements.

“As we began to plan our company-wide rollout of the IBM FileNet solution, we encountered a major roadblock,” says the spokesperson. “Our back-office teams were used to a drag-and-drop interface in Windows Explorer to access and manage records. The default IBM Content Navigator interface in IBM FileNet—while very powerful for experienced, tech-savvy users—was a major departure from the experience our back-office teams were familiar with.”

SOLUTION SELECTION

The provider knew that retraining its thousands of back-office users would be complex, costly, and disruptive. To solve the challenge, the healthcare provider engaged expert consultants from Genus Technologies to enhance IBM FileNet with its Genus File Explorer (GFEX) solution. 

With GFEX, the company allows business users to continue to drag and drop files into the same folder structures as before in Windows Explorer. Behind the scenes, shared drives are replaced by a central instance of IBM FileNet which is configured to meet the company’s rigorous governance policies—and GFEX makes the entire process transparent to the end users with a familiar Windows user experience. 

“With GFEX, we allow all our back-office users to continue to manage records in exactly the same way as before,” says the spokesperson. “The difference is that intelligent automation from GFEX makes sure that every record is stored in IBM FileNet—not a shared drive—with the correct retention and disposition schedule, and a full audit trail.”

After a successful proof of concept exercise in the company’s legal department, Genus Technologies worked with the healthcare provider’s IT team to develop a production-ready implementation of IBM FileNet and GFEX.

“Our legal team was the first to alert us to the potential user experience challenges of the IBM Content Navigator interface, which made them the ideal audience for our proof of concept,” says the spokesperson. “The legal team was delighted with the user experience of GFEX, which gave us great confidence that the solution would meet the needs of all our back-office users.”

SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION

By collaborating closely with the healthcare provider’s IT team, Genus Technologies helped deploy and test the IBM FileNet and GFEX solutions to support workflows for key records from across the business. Today, all emails, medical, and financial records from across the business are stored in IBM FileNet.

“Today, we can provide ironclad digital evidence to show regulators that we are managing sensitive records to the highest regulatory standards. Best of all, we achieved this goal without any impact on day-to-day back-office operations.”
– Spokesperson, Leading Healthcare Provider

“Genus Technologies helped us gradually migrate millions of documents from our legacy file shares to IBM FileNet in a way that was completely transparent to our back-office users,” explains the spokesperson. “Today, we can provide ironclad digital evidence to show regulators that we are managing sensitive records to the highest regulatory standards. Best of all, we achieved this goal without any impact on day-to-day back-office operations.”

ACHIEVEMENTS AND BENEFITS

• Enhanced regulatory compliance
• Streamlined records management
• User-friendly interface
• Efficient migration

SUMMARY

Based on its positive experience with the GFEX solution, the healthcare provider is already planning for the future. The company is exploring the possibility of migrating its on-premises IBM FileNet environment to the cloud, and adding structured data sources such as databases to the platform.

The spokesperson concludes: “Working with Genus Technologies was a very positive experience, and the team continues to help us with support and development services for new features. Thanks to the GFEX solution from Genus Technologies, our users were able to quickly adapt, so we’re maximizing the value of our investment in IBM FileNet, and ensuring full regulatory compliance at all times.”